What is Gained from Reflecting as a Team

Certain drags on organizations can be prevented and benefits will be gained

Joel Trammell is the chairman and co-founder at CEO-S and writer and publisher of Managing the Future (Substack)

A leader, if they aim to be achievement oriented and successful, has to be consistent in encouraging sophisticated thinking within their organization.

A recent comment under an article on this platform briefly mentioned it, inspiring this article at Communication Intelligence, because what was expressed, is smart.

"... something that I had to learn along the way: Encourage reflection across the team,” wrote Joel Trammell, a veteran CEO and executive educator and the chairman and co-founder at Chief Executive Operating System (CEO-S).

He is also writes and produces Managing the Future, a curated newsletter on Substack designed specifically for CEOs and senior executives, because, as he says, “the modern business landscape is flooded with information, much of it irrelevant to the critical decisions that CEOs and business leaders face daily.”

His aim with MtF is to “cut through the noise.”

Back to the focus: what specifically did Trammell mean when he commented, “Encourage reflection across the team.” It seems to reason that there have to be positive byproducts created from that deep thinking and gained understanding.

“Encouraging reflection across the team brings a host of benefits, but the biggest in my opinion, is alignment,” Trammell says.

“When individuals reflect, they better understand their decisions and how those decisions affect the broader team or goals. Shared reflection nurtures accountability and continuous improvement.”

It doesn’t have to result in being the negativity that some may assume.

“As I wrote in my book The CEO Tightrope, ‘Success comes not from avoiding every mistake, but from ensuring you never keep making the same one,’” Trammell states. “Reflection prevents blind repetition of mistakes, unlocking real learning.”

When this practice is not a regular part of the operational process, unnecessary costs are going to materialize.

“Without this emphasis on reflection, I found my teams tended to operate on autopilot and get stuck in unexamined routines or assumptions,” Trammell recalls. “The result was silos, inefficiencies and avoidable errors.”

Momentum stalled as well.

“Early in my career, I realized that even with talented people, output stagnated without the discipline of revisiting why we do what we do,” Trammell learned.

He knew he had to begin to more effectively communicate this core need as a requirement, making it the standard and drive the approach as a commitment.

“Addressing this required leading by example,” Trammell says.

“I openly reflected on my own choices — both the successes and the mistakes — and shared insights during meetings,” he explains.

To make it work well, Trammell realized he had to implement a system for it.

“In team settings, I introduced structured reflective moments, specifically post-project debriefs or asking probing questions about outcomes during 1-on-1s,” he says.

That process and habit developed into a strength for the organization and the mission.

“Over time, this became part of the culture,” Trammell says.

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